Luck of the Irish
by Brass Mama
Summary: Shane's first day at Torchwood isn't as bad as Alien Angel Dust, but it got up their.


Luck of the Irish

Disclaimers: I claim no ownership or profit from Torchwood, though having Jack and

Warnings: surprisingly, none.

A/N: Thanks to Helen for inspiration and for starting this wonderful AU'verse. Admittedly, imaging Shane helping with Myfanwy makes me think of an episode of Primeval when Connor and Rex are running across the green of a golf course to get away from a similar dinosaur (as someone pointed out, they are not the same dinosaur. thnx TTclock) In advance I admit I have no idea how to write an Irish accent so for anyone who doesn't know, Shane is Irish, which is sexy.

Oh, and don't forget to empty the bins.

London

December 29, 2009

The London rain was refreshing. After a two hour long bus ride from Cardiff, Shane was glad to be outside. Glad not to be stuck next to the annoying rosy cheeked woman any more._ How could someone spend an entire hour talking about dog breeding? _She was a little too friendly to strangers, in his opinion.

The bus station was mostly empty at this late hour. Shane glanced at the cheap digital watch around his wrist, featuring a character from Star Wars on the wristband. It was 11:37. Hopefully Martha was still at the address Jack had given him. It was in the warehouse district, which was mostly full of long abandoned buildings that the decline in factory jobs had left in their wake.

Shane walked over to a map to find it, and groaned, seeing that it was on the other side of the city. _Maybe I should've taken Jack up on his offer to drive me down here._ He'd never be able to afford the cab ride over there, maybe the bus. If it still runs this late at night.

Since the buses probably didn't run to that part of London anyway, Shane started walking, though he didn't get very far before someone in a red compact car honked at him. He looked over his shoulder to see a woman with dark skin and somewhat long brown hair up in a hasty ponytail looking out her window at him. "Shane Bruster?" she asked as she got out of her car.

Shane turned around all the way, not recognizing the woman who knew his name.

He must've made some sort of look, because a moment later she spoke again. "Lois Habiba, Jack called, said you took the bus here. Martha was going to come get you, but… something came up." She smiled and held out her hand.

Shane remembered the name. Jack had mentioned that she worked at the London branch with Martha.

"In that case, I'm Shane." He took her hand, noting that she had quite a shake for someone so small, not that he was a giant. "Thanks for the ride. I don't suppose you know of somewhere I could stay, do you?"

"I'm sure we can make some arrangements, but let's get back to the warehouse, first" She headed back to her car, closely followed by Shane. Lois reached through the window and popped her trunk. "You can put your stuff in the back next to the spare."

Shane wondered why she'd said to put it by the spare, that is, until he looked in the trunk. The only empty space was by the spare! The back was filled with black cases of varying sizes, as well as a few garment bags hung off to the side. Everything was organized, but it still looked like chaos.

Shane put his bigger bag in the spot next to the spare, and walked around to the passenger side, putting his other bag in the back seat. "Lot of stuff in your trunk." he commented, not bothering to buckle up as Lois pulled away from the curb.

"Job kinda requires you to be ready at all times." Lois shrugged. She'd gotten used to the need to be prepared

Shane felt slightly uncomfortable, knowing that this woman next him fought aliens **and** politicians at the same time. _How do you make small talk when you do THAT for a living? _It seemed like the politicians would be more than a handful.He still could try.

"So, where's Martha?"

"Oh, she had to go deal with a blowfish that showed up by the docks. We'd hope that the rift was a big enough attraction to keep them up there, but I guess..." Lois smiled and shrugged, looking over the Irishman's appearance. "So, you and your fedora must get plenty of Indiana Jones jokes, huh?"

"Don't even start. I've heard all of them. I just wish archeology was half that exciting. I mostly get stuck doing research. Then of course on my last dig, when I actually got to get my hands dirty, the funding got cut."

Lois nodded and after a moment asked, "You got a girlfriend or anything?" Shane gave her a surprised look. "Oh, no. I was just curious. I'm not looking for a boyfriend, I'm just trying to make conversation."

"You already have one, figured as much since you're so beautiful." Shane tried to dodge the girlfriend question with a bit of flattery, which usually works. He was taking a break from his long time girlfriend, Kim, mainly because they'd had a big fight over him moving into this job in London.

"_Shane, I can't just up and move to London.. M' life is here!" Kim was yelling across their shared flat as Shane was grabbing a couple of his things, shoving them in a bag._

"_But, Kim, I thought you loved London?" This had gone so much better in his head._

"_As a weekend get away, Shane. I don't wan'ta move there. Just 'cause some relative you tracked down, who you've known for a few years, offers you a job, doesn't mean… I'm not going to uproot everything to move with you. Why can't we just stay here? They'll be more digs, eventually."_

_Shane looked down at the floor. It wasn't like he hadn't expected this; he was just an optimist. He hoped she'd go along with it. They were in love, weren't they? Maybe not, not like he thought they were._

"_Kim, I…" He floundered a bit. "No one's looking in the ground. Everyone's all… minds toward the future. No one wants to look at the past."_

"_It'll pass. After what happened with the Daleks, archeology dropped, but it came back. It'll just take a bit."_

"_I can't wait that long. I need a job, Kim and… this one's better than looking at relics in a museum all day."_

"_There's the other thing, Shane. You can't even tell me hardly anything about it, just that it's classified or what ever you want to call it. What makes you think you're fit to do classified stuff, you're an archaeologist… not... not… Indian Jones!"_

Lois shook Shane from his thoughts, "Thanks for the compliment, but I'm single" She paused, figuring there was a reason that Shane didn't want talk about relationships, and thought of something else to talk about. It was still about a twenty minute ride to the Warehouse, even with no traffic. "You're an archaeologist, right?" Shane nodded and Lois continued. "What was your last dig?"

"It was in, uh, Egypt. About 80 kilometers outside Cairo. Our funding got cut after the 456... You know." Shane didn't really know what words would describe, succinctly, what those aliens tried to do. "Anyways, I got back here and there aren't a lot of archeology jobs right now. Too many people are lookin' at the skies to look in the ground, I guess."

"I know what you mean. I mean, I was just a temp, filling in during an update at the Home Office. I understood that aliens were out there, but you don't expect to turn around and see them on your door step right away after…" Lois still didn't understand how the Earth had ended up in orbit with 26 other planets.

Shane nodded, the Daleks.

Lois glanced at him. "So, Jack said you don't know for sure if you'll stay on." Shane looked over at her.

"Yeah, I don't know what about me says 'Fit to Fight Aliens.' I'm barely out of college." he suddenly felt that he hadn't thought this through enough, slight panic rose in his veins.

"Well, Torchwood pays pretty well, so at least you'll pay off your loans pretty soon." Lois smiled.

* * *

"I hate blowfish." Martha muttered as she finally walked out of her make shift office, a towel hung around her shoulders. "You'd hope that they'd stay in Cardiff, but no they want to see how much fun they can have here." Seeing Shane she smiled. "Hi! Sorry I couldn't pick you up, had to deal with a bit of a problem. Nice to see you again, Shane,"

"Same here." Shane glance around the pretty much empty warehouse, seeing only a few couches, work tables and a couple small rooms that once served as storage rooms. "So, this is where you work? In a run down warehouse?"

""It was abandoned in the nineties. Used to be a holding facility." Lois said, setting her stuff down. "Coffee?"

"Uh, sure. So, where's all the cool stuff with the blinking lights?" Shane was surprised by how bare their head quarters were. They fought aliens out of this place? He didn't see any flashy looking equipment, no morgue thankfully. He'd seen pictures of the Hub from before it had been blown up, and it had skewed his expectations. The Hub was still being rebuilt, apparently it wouldn't be fully usable for about a month still.

"Not a ton of stuff here. We're looking into something better, but Torchwood London used to be run out of Canada One and that's a bit too big for us." Martha taking a cup of coffee from Lois, "Thanks. There are a couple of other offices that Torchwood still owns that we could move into, but until we get that sorted, this is headquarters." Shane glanced around again, noticing a far wall had 'HUB 2' spray painted on it in a garish shade of orange, causing him to snort.

"At least it has some personality. So," Shane turned back to Martha and Lois, "I guess I'll just crash on one of the..."

He was about to say couches, but a sudden squawk cut him off. Through a broken window high above their heads, Shane saw a giant, reptilian bird come soaring in through the window.

"What the hell?" he'd back up quickly and tripped over a chair and stared at the pteredon, from where he'd landed.

"Oh, that's Myfanwy. Though, she's not supposed to come back for a couple more nights for her meds."

"Dino Meds? You've got to be kidding me."

"No, and guess what, you get to help. First job at Torchwood, we might as well start with something easy."

"WHAT?! Martha, that's a dinosaur and you expect me to what?"

"Distract her while I get her meds for her and give it to her."

Shane gulped. "You want me to distract a dinosaur? I'm not sure this is for me, I've only ever worked with dinosaur bones, not actual dinosaurs."

"Don't get so worried about it. You just have to bait it with some dark chocolate." Lois looked over with knowing smile, "If she likes you, you'll be fine." she held out a still wrapped bar of chocolate.

"Uh, maybe a stupid question then, what if she doesn't?" Shane glanced back at Myfanwy and gulped a little.

Martha and Lois just smiled while Martha reach in the small fridge they had for the prepared meat.

"Just unwrap the bar and hold it out and when she goes for it toss it, away from us mind you. I'm going to throw this over there." Martha wave in a vague direction, definitely away from them.

Shane gave the two women a nervous look as he unwrapped the bar. "Are you sure this is safe?"

He held out the candy bar toward the dinosaur, a stray thought of irony going through his mind. An archaeologist eaten by a dinosaur. Or archaeologist and dinosaur friends for life. The thoughts would've made him crack a smile if he hadn't been busy making sure that his fingers didn't pull a Houdini on him.

The Pterodactyl was slowly moving its... her wings as she made sure that nothing in her, albeit temporary, domain. A few moment later, she saw the proverbial olive leaf and gave a squawking sound. Shane flinched and Myfanwy slowly inched forward, fixed on the chocolate. After what seemed like a little less than forever, Myfanwy had finally inched forward enough to stretched her neck ouch to snatch the treat. Just when she was about to do so, a phone rang,startling Shane and Myfanwy at the same time. He tossed the candy and ducked, hoping he'd still have a head to look up with.

The was another squawk and Myfanwy retreated to the far side of the warehouse to eat the meat Martha had tossed in her direction.

Martha was smiling, and obviously fighting the urge to laugh.

"That's not funny. That could have taken my hand off." Shane stood back up brushing off.

"Did you hear your self? You..." Martha just started laughing.

Shane gave her an undignified look, until her thought of the insanity of all this. He hadn't been here for more than an hour and as a bit of a prank his coworkers had set him up with a creature that had been extinct for... He started laughing at himself. No wonder Jack seemed to have so much fun, if they didn't they'd probably go insane.

"That actually was kinda thrilling. How often do you do that?"

"Not that often. She's only coming here until the Hub is done being rebuilt." Martha was getting over her laughter, looked over to see Lois coming back from taking the phone call.

"Martha. Sarah Jane just called. Mr. Smith detected a small piece of space debris enter the atmosphere and land in an old Warehouse not too far from here." Lois wrote down the address and handed it to Martha.

"And I was hoping to get home at a reasonable hour tonight." Martha said sarcastically. "You up for a quick retrieval?" She turned toward Shane.

"Sure, why not."

"Okay, then let's move in five." Martha nodded at Lois. "Could you show him where the kits are?"

"No problem."

"Thanks, I've got to call Tom and let him know I'm not going to be in tonight."

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AN: Yes, I need to work on my other stuff, but this wanted written. Stu... I mean nice intelligent muses keep yanking me in every which direction. Ugh! Anyways, will keep working. Have a nice week and Happy b-day to Rayne Tam, even though it was monday.


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